Friday, July 29, 2016

Back in May I highlighted something fishy going on at Otakaro Ltd. Otakaro is the government's delivery vehicle for the Christchurch rebuild. But in May, Christchurch reconstrution Minister Gerry Brownlee allowed it to change its constitution, removing a requirement that its board keep "full and accurate minutes are kept of all proceedings" and explicitly allowing it to repudiate its own minutes. More recently, I've been made aware that Otakaro, a government-owned company responsible for billions of dollars of government assets and expenditure on a major government project - has been exempted from the Public Records Act. Which means that it is no longer required to

create and maintain full and accurate records of its affairs, in accordance with normal, prudent business practice...

[From the documents I've OIA'd from the Chief Archivist, it seems that this exemption has caused a bit of a headache, since it means that Otakaro cannot legally be transferred public records formerly held by CERA. Its enough of a headache that they are apparently investigating "amending [the] PRA 2005 by order in council". Its not clear whether that is to bring Otakaro and similar crown-owned companies under the Public Records Act regime, or whether it is to legalise the at-present unlawful destruction of public records. I'm poking into that further...]

The problem? As a company named in Schedule 4A of the Public Finance Act 1989, Otakaro is subject to the Official Information Act. Obviously, that's pretty meaningless if it is not required to retain official information so it can be requested.

And the kicker: I asked Otakaro if they have a document retention / archives policy. Their answer? Of course not.

So, just to make that clear, a government-owned company responsible for billions of dollars of government assets and expenditure on a major government project and subject to the OIA is not required to create and retain proper records and has no policy for doing so. You'd almost think they didn't want people to look at what they were doing...